A wave of roadside bombs and a more than a dozen car bombs across Iraq on Wednesday, killied dozens. In the worst attack, a car bomb at a passport office in Kut, 160 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, killed 20 people, including 15 police, and wounded 90 people, most of them police.

Earlier, a suicide car bomber killed at least 15 people and injured 34 others on Wednesday in an attack near a police station in the Iraqi capital, security sources said. According to Reuters, the attack, which severely damaged the station and surrounding buildings, took place in Baghdad's northern Qahira district, an Interior Ministry source and police sources said. Two other policemen also were killed Wednesday, one in a car bombing in the northern city of Kirkuk and another in a drive-by shooting in western Baghdad.

A series of other car bomb attacks in five other towns and cities raised the nationwide toll to at least 46, and almost 250 wounded.